Fusion Fund supports early-stage entrepreneurs who are looking to build globally disruptive companies using innovative technologies to drive systemic change. They are entering the next wave of technological advancement and foundational innovation is required to enable massive growth.  With Fusion Fund’s technical and entrepreneurial backgrounds, we seek to support entrepreneurs who are building companies with strong technical barriers and advantages in their business models.

Fusion Fund

Emergent Ventures is a venture firm that invests in seed-stage software and AI startups. Emergent partners early with high-potential entrepreneurs and helps them find product-market fit and develop go-to-market. The firm focuses on the Intelligent Software space, which includes themes such as Enterprise Automation, Intelligent Voice and Video, Logistics-tech, DevOps/Developer Tools, Finance-tech, and Cloud Management

Emergent Ventures

Berkeley SkyDeck Fund is an investment Arm Behind UC Berkeley's SkyDeck Accelerator.

Berkeley SkyDeck Fund

Surface Ventures is a seed and pre-seed venture capital firm focused on partnering with B2B software companies.

Surface Ventures

Khosla Ventures invests in companies that are bold, early, and impactful. The firm was started in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, to provide venture assistance to entrepreneurs. Khosla Ventures invests in a range of areas including AI, climate, sustainability, enterprise, consumer, fintech, digital health, medtech and diagnostics, therapeutics, and frontier technology.

Khosla Ventures

Loft Labs

Loft Labs enables any organization to scale self-service access to Kubernetes from 10 to 10,000 engineers. They are the maintainers of several open-source projects to support this mission, including DevSpace, vcluster, jsPolicy and kiosk. Our product is called Loft and ties these open-source projects together into a single Kubernetes platform that companies can use to provide engineers with secure but unimpeded access to cloud resources and to make the switch to truly cloud-native engineering practices.

Loft Labs is a technology company that specializes in providing solutions for Kubernetes and cloud-native application development and management.

Building future-ready applications in the cloud

Cloud-native Tech

Loft Labs Introduces vCluster Cloud, a Managed Solution to Simplify and Reduce Costs of Kubernetes

Loft Labs is a technology company that specializes in providing solutions for Kubernetes and cloud-native application development and management.Loft Labs offers a suite of innovative Kubernetes management tools, including Loft, vCluster, Workspace, and multi-tenancy features. Loft simplifies cluster management and access control, while vCluster enables the creation of isolated namespaces within clusters. Workspaces facilitate collaborative development, and multi-tenancy enhances resource efficiency. These solutions prioritize simplicity, resource optimization, and scalability, making Kubernetes more accessible and cost-effective for organizations. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27677">March 2024</a>, the company launched vCluster for Rancher, allowing Rancher users to self-sufficiently create and manage virtual Kubernetes clusters alongside underlying clusters from a centralized location.Loft Labs offers its products and services through a subscription-based model.Key customers and partnershipsWith a 100+ customer base, Loft Labs’ customers include Atlan, Ada, Appen, GoFundMe, LottieFiles, Cashfree Payments, HqO, Outreach, Ericsson, and Shipwire.

SingleStore is a company that provides a distributed SQL database platform for real-time analytics and operational applications.SingleStore’s platform combines the scalability of NoSQL with the querying capabilities of SQL. It enables organizations to ingest, process, and analyze large volumes of data in real-time, making it ideal for applications that require fast and accurate data processing. SingleStore solves the problem of handling massive amounts of data and delivering real-time insights for use cases such as real-time analytics, operational analytics, and high-velocity transactional applications.SingleStore's competitive advantage is its ability to handle analytical and transactional workloads in a single platform. It allows businesses to consolidate their data infrastructure, simplifying management and reducing operational costs.SingleStore operates with a sales model that includes direct sales and partnerships with technology and solution providers. It offers different pricing and licensing options tailored to the needs of its customers, including subscription-based models.Key customers and partnershipsSingleStore serves some of the largest tech and non-tech enterprises across various industries, including Comcast, Cisco, Akamai Technologies, Fiverr, Goldman Sachs, Sony, Siemens, Hulu.SingleStore partners with all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud) and has technology partnerships with Dell, Red Hat, Intel, HP Enterprise, and Looker.Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, SingleStore’s latest fundraising was in October 2022 from a USD 30 million Series F round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Prosperity7 Ventures. The funds were slated to fuel SingleStore’s growth and various strategic initiatives.

SingleStore

Platform9 is an open-distributed cloud company that offers solutions for managing hybrid clouds, Kubernetes, and more. Platform9 offers several products and solutions, including Managed Kubernetes, Managed OpenStack, and Managed Bare Metal.Managed Kubernetes allows businesses to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure, while Managed OpenStack offers a simplified way to deploy and manage private clouds. Managed Bare Metal enables businesses to run Kubernetes, OpenStack, and other workloads on dedicated hardware with bare-metal performance.Platform9 claims to deliver a seamless Kubernetes experience across any infrastructure. Platform9's SaaS-managed Kubernetes solution offers a single view to manage Kubernetes clusters running on any cloud or on-premises infrastructure, including bare metal servers, vSphere, and public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure, providing customers with a unified Kubernetes experience. In addition, Platform9 offers automated security patching, on-demand upgrades, self-healing clusters, multi-version support, and audit logging.Platform9 has a subscription-based sales model. It offers its services on a pay-as-you-go basis, with pricing based on the number of managed nodes or instances, with optional add-ons for additional features and support.Key customers and partnershipsPlatform9 targets enterprise customers who run and manage Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies on distributed cloud services, whether on-premises or in the public cloud. Its customers typically include large organizations with complex IT environments, such as financial services, healthcare, technology, and retail companies.As of mid-2022, Platform9 catered to more than 60 enterprise clients and powered 40,000 nodes across private, public, and edge clouds.Platform9 has partnerships with various cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Additionally, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32723">August 2024</a>, Platform9 partnered with Fairwinds, a managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service provider, to tackle issues related to Kubernetes over-provisioning and cost management costs in public cloud deployments.

Platform9

Mirantis is a technology company that provides cloud-native software and services to help businesses modernize their IT infrastructure.Mirantis specializes in open-source software, focusing on Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies. Its core offering is the Mirantis Cloud Native Platform, a managed Kubernetes service that provides a complete set of tools for deploying and managing containerized applications. The platform helps organizations adopt and scale Kubernetes quickly and easily, with features like automated provisioning, integrated monitoring, and self-service access to resources. Mirantis also offers professional services including consulting, training, and support for Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies.Mirantis sells its products and services through a subscription-based model. Customers can choose from various annual subscription plans, depending on their needs.Key customers and partnershipsMirantis focuses on enterprise customers who deploy and manage large-scale private clouds. Some of its high-profile customers include Volkswagen Group, Société Générale, S&amp;P Global, Paypal, Volkswagen, and GSK.Mirantis also has technology partnerships with several companies, including Arm, Cisco, Entrust, and Fujitsu, and hardware vendors like Dell EMC, Intel, and Supermicro.

Mirantis

Rafay Systems is a cloud-native platform that automates deployment, life cycle management, and scaling of containerized applications across all cloud infrastructure.Rafay's platform provides enterprises with the tools to deploy and manage containerized applications, microservices, and serverless functions in a scalable and efficient way. The platform provides features including multi-cluster management, automated workload scaling, automated application recovery, and granular application-level access controls. Rafay also provides a Kubernetes-native API gateway that simplifies managing and securing microservices, and includes capabilities to include support for graphics processing unit-based workloads.Additionally, Rafay Systems <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29580">offers an AI suite</a> to simplify AI application development and deployment. This suite includes pre-configured LLMOps Playgrounds, a turnkey MLOps pipeline, central management of LLM providers and prompts, and AI data source integrations and governance. It also offers a cost optimization suite to help IT professionals manage Kubernetes expenses with dynamic cluster scaling, auto-rightsizing, policy application, and simplified infrastructure.Rafay has a subscription-based sales model and offers its platform as a service. The pricing is based on the number of clusters, nodes per cluster, and the amount of data transferred.Key customers and partnershipsRafay’s target customer segments are enterprises, service providers, and software vendors. Some of its notable clients include Verizon, Equinix, Samsung, Moneygram, and the US Air Force.In 2022, Rafay launched its Technical Alliance Program (TAP), which brings together technology and solutions providers to develop joint solutions to simplify and streamline Kubernetes management and operations. Partners of the program include GitLab Inc., F5 NGINX, MinIO, New Relic, and Sysdig. Meanwhile, Rafay’s public cloud and managed Kubernetes partners include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle.

Rafay Systems

Docker, Inc. is a technology company developing productivity tools centered around Docker, a software container platform that automates the deployment of code inside containers.Docker, Inc's major commercial products include Docker Hub, a central repository for containers, and Docker Desktop, a GUI application that enables Windows and Mac users to manage containers.Docker's ease of use, portability, resource efficiency, scalability, and strong ecosystem has made it a popular solution for deploying and managing applications in various environments.Docker has a subscription-based sales model. Docker also collaborates with various channel partners, including technology resellers, system integrators, and value-added distributors to expand its reach.Moreover, Docker has made several strategic acquisitions to enhance its capabilities: AtomicJar (2023), Nestybox (2022), SocketPlane (2015), and Tutum (2015), among others.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the platform was used by more than 18 million developers. As of March 2022, the company served more than 56,000 commercial customers, including Adobe, Netflix, PayPal, Verizon, and Target.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27771">March 2024</a>, Docker expanded its partnership with Red Hat to integrate Testcontainers Cloud into the Red Hat OpenShift platform. This partnership aimed to streamline the process of building cloud-native applications and facilitate real-world testing using Docker containers.Docker’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) was more than USD 50 million in 2021.

Docker

Vendors offering cloud-native infrastructure or provisioning, which is the first layer in the cloud-native landscape. It encompasses tools to create and harden the foundation of cloud-native apps.

Vendors offering execution environment (runtime) solutions. This encompasses everything a container needs to run in a cloud-native environment, including the code used to start a container.

Vendors offering solutions for application definition and development. This layer focuses on the tools that enable engineers to build cloud-native applications

Vendors offering orchestration and management solutions including tools to handle running and connecting cloud-native applications.

Vendors offering observability, including tools to understand a cloud system from its external outputs, measured by CPU time, memory, disk space, latency, errors, etc.

Vendors that bundle different tools from different layers together into a platform, solving a larger problem. These can include an orchestration tool, a container runtime, service discovery, networking, an API gateway, etc.

Provide tools to design and build applications for deployment and operation in cloud environments

Disruptors are using Generative AI for AI-based assistants and help-bots, while others provide the technology for developing and deploying Gen AI applications and models.

<div>
 Loft Labs, a company specializing in cloud-native infrastructure, has raised USD 24 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Khosla Ventures and saw participation from Fusion Fund, Surface Ventures, Emergent Ventures, Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, and Kit Merker.
 The funds will be utilised to accelerate the development and adoption of tools for platform engineers and developers, such as vCluster and DevPod. Loft Labs also plans to invent new solutions to streamline the management of Kubernetes and multi-cloud integration.
 Over the past year, Loft Labs has seen significant growth, with a 4.6x increase in ARR and over 40 million image pulls on vCluster. Moreover, the company has launched products like <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22416"> vCluster Pro </a> and <a href="https://loft.sh/blog/loft-labs-launches-new-open-source-project-devpod-for-dev-environments-as-code-on-any-infrastructure/"> DevPod </a>. Furthermore, Loft Labs has secured new partnerships with CoreWeave, Outreach, Lintasarta, Aussie Broadband, and five Global Fortune 500 companies.
</div>

Loft Labs

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